The present invention generally relates to anatomy labeling on a picture archiving and communication system (PACS). In particular, the present invention relates to anatomy labeling on a PACS to enable anatomy specific image presentation and analysis.
A clinical or healthcare environment is a crowded, demanding environment that would benefit from organization and improved ease of use of imaging systems, data storage systems, and other equipment used in the healthcare environment. A healthcare environment, such as a hospital or clinic, encompasses a large array of professionals, patients, and equipment. Personnel in a healthcare facility must manage a plurality of patients, systems, and tasks to provide quality service to patients. Healthcare personnel may encounter many difficulties or obstacles in their workflow.
Healthcare environments, such as hospitals or clinics, include clinical information systems, such as hospital information systems (HIS) and radiology information systems (RIS), and storage systems, such as picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). Information stored may include patient medical histories, imaging data, test results, diagnosis information, management information, and/or scheduling information, for example. The information may be centrally stored or divided at a plurality of locations. Healthcare practitioners may desire to access patient information or other information at various points in a healthcare workflow. For example, during surgery, medical personnel may access patient information, such as images of a patient's anatomy, that are stored in a medical information system. Alternatively, medical personnel may enter new information, such as history, diagnostic, or treatment information, into a medical information system during an ongoing medical procedure.
A PACS may connect to medical diagnostic imaging devices and employ an acquisition gateway (between the acquisition device and the PACS), storage and archiving units, display workstations, databases, and sophisticated data processors. These components are integrated together by a communication network and data management system. A PACS has, in general, the overall goals of streamlining health-care operations, facilitating distributed remote examination and diagnosis, and improving patient care.
A typical application of a PACS system is to provide one or more medical images for examination by a medical professional. For example, a PACS system can provide a series of x-ray images to a display workstation where the images are displayed for a radiologist to perform a diagnostic examination. Based on the presentation of these images, the radiologist can provide a diagnosis. For example, the radiologist can diagnose a tumor or lesion in x-ray images of a patient's lungs.
PACS are complicated to configure and to operate. Additionally, use of PACS involves training and preparation that may vary from user to user. Thus, a system and method that facilitate operation of a PACS would be highly desirable. A need exists for a system and method that improve ease of use and automation of a PACS.
Computed tomography (“CT”) exams may include images that are acquired from scanning large sections of a patients' body. For example, a chest/abdomen/pelvis CT exam includes one or more images of several different anatomy. Each anatomy may be better viewed under different window level settings, however. Thus, when a radiologist or other personnel is interpreting a chest/abdomen/pelvis CT exam, he or she switches among different window level settings to view images for different anatomy, for example. It would benefit radiologists and other personnel if the window level setting(s) were automatically adjusted for them based on the image(s)/anatomy(ies) that they are viewing.
Currently, image review workstations cannot correlate image content to anatomy to facilitate presentation of relevant anatomical data. However, healthcare personnel, such as radiologists, may be interested to view information about specific anatomical structures and/or other patient data when viewing and/or interpreting patient image(s). For example, when a radiologist is viewing a CT axial image that contains the liver, he or she may want to learn about the disease processes associated with the liver or the patient's lab tests associated with the liver. Thus, an image review workstation having the capability to recognize an anatomy of interest, such as a liver, and search for and present anatomy-related information to a user would be highly desirable.
During an exam interpretation process, radiologists and/or other healthcare personnel may like to note image findings as a mechanism to compose reports. In the case of structured reports, radiologists have found that the mechanism to input data is too cumbersome. That is, since there are so many possible findings related to an exam procedure, the findings need to be categorized in some hierarchy structure. The numerous hierarchical levels and choices of selection require extensive manual manipulation from the radiologist.
For example, a chest/abdomen/pelvis CT exam may include images of the liver, pancreas, stomach, etc. If a radiologist wants to input a finding related to the liver, he or she must currently traverse through a hierarchy of choices presented in the GUI before being able to identify the desired finding.
When radiologists are viewing patients' images in the exam interpretation process, sometimes they would like to view the images specific to certain organs. For example, a patient with a history of colon cancer has a CT exam that contains images of the stomach, small intestine, liver, pancreas, colon, etc. A radiologist may want to first view the images of the colon. If the colon does not demonstrate any remarkable abnormalities, then the radiologist may suspect that the reported symptoms are related to ailments in the liver and wants to view the images containing the liver. However, there is currently no method on image review workstations that enables a radiologist to view images specific to organs. A radiologist can only view images in sequential order.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method for improved image presentation and analysis. There is a need for a system and method for anatomy labeling to facilitate anatomy specific image presentation and analysis.